JOELLYN DUESBERRY

JoeLLYn DUeSBerrY
40 Y E A R S CEL EB R AT I N G MAI NE
For over four decades, landscape painter Joellyn Duesberry has returned to Maine each summer, finding fresh inspiration from treasured locations. Duesberrys paintings are dynamic and remarkable for their rich, intense use of color and unique sense of the geometry of place. John Walsh, director emeritus of the J. Paul Getty Museum and one of many supporters Duesberry has in her corner, says of her: Joellyn Duesberry is one of the best landscape painters in the country. She follows in the great lineage of postwar American gestural painters that includes Fairfield Porter, Wolf Kahn, and Neil Welliver. Joellyn Duesberry was born in Richmond, Virginia. After graduating with honors from Smith College, she earned a Masters from the Institute of Art at New York University. Although she calls Colorado home, Duesberry divides her time between studios in Denver and Millbrook, New York, and summers spent on Mount Desert Island, Maine. Duesberry has painted plein-air around the world for over four decades and is the veteran of dozens of solo exhibitions at such nationally recognized galleries as James Graham & Sons in New York and Gerald Peters Gallery in Santa Fe. In Maine, Gleason Fine Art has represented her since 2008. In 2011, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center held a major retrospective of her work. Of her own paintings, Duesberry says: I am fiercely committed to my materials and to an internalized subject. No matter the continent or square foot upon which I set my easel, I seek an authentic, direct and high-voltage response on canvas. Duesberrys work has been the subject of two books: Elevated Perspective: The Paintings of Joellyn Duesberry, published in 2011 by Duesberry in cooperation with the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center; and A Covenant of Seasons (Hudson Hills Press for the Virginia Museum of Fine Art, 1998), which accompanied a traveling show of Duesberry monotypes. She has also been featured in many reviews and magazine articles including in Plein Air (2011, 2008), Southwest Art, Maine, Boats, and Harbors (2000), and Art in America (1992, 1986). In Maine, Duesberry paints points of land, curving causeways, marshy bogs, and secluded coves. Her territory is usually off the beaten path, wild places inhabited by gnarly trees, lush vegetation, dark waters, and craggy outcroppings. Of favorite places to paint in Maine, none means more to Duesberry than the great bog at Duck Pond in Acadia National Park. Duesberry considers her Maine Bog Triptych, painted in 2010, to be her most important Maine painting to date. Arts writer Carl Little describes the monumental triptych as: [A] symphony of visual data, from the lily pad clusters to the scraggly trees that lead the eye to the remnant stakes of a fence. We join Duesberry at the edge of this wild landscape, enthralled by the dynamics of her place. Although well-known for her oils, in 1986, at the behest of artist Richard Diebenkorn, a mentor and friend, Duesberry began to make monotype prints, a process that allowed her a new level of creative freedom. For Joellyn Duesberry: 40 Years Celebrating Maine, we carefully selected over two dozen Maine oil paintings and monotypes. Included are acknowledged masterworks such as the oil paintings Maine Bog Triptych, Morning, Ogden Point, and The Yellow Quarry, and the magnificent, four-foot-long monotype Bright Bog. Martha W. Gleason Co-owner, Gleason Fine Art, Inc.
Front Cover: Maine Bog Triptych (center panel), 2010, oil on linen, 40 x 60 inches (full triptych, 180 inches). Pages 75 & 76, Elevated Perspective: The Paintings of Joellyn Duesberry (Denver: Rose Fredrick Fine Art Publishing, 2011).

JOELLYN DUESBERRY

Gleason Fine Art, Inc.

Westbridge Garden, ME, 1998, oil on linen, 36 x 48 inches, page 53, Elevated Perspective

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Gleason Fine Art, Inc.

The Yellow Quarry, ME, 2009, oil on linen, 50 x 40 inches, page 73, Elevated Perspective Private Collection

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Gleason Fine Art, Inc.

Between Cove and Ocean, Port Clyde, 2009, oil on linen, 32 x 54 inches

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Gleason Fine Art, Inc.

Maine House and Orchard, Big Cranberry, 2007, oil on linen, 20 x 40 inches

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Gleason Fine Art, Inc.

High Tide at Goose Cove, 1999, oil on linen, 40 x 50 inches

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Gleason Fine Art, Inc.

Evening in the Bog, oil on linen, 48 x 36 inches

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Gleason Fine Art, Inc.

Morning Ogden Point, ME, 1997, oil on linen, 36 x 84 inches, page 50, Elevated Perspective

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Gleason Fine Art, Inc.

September High Tide Evening, Mt. Desert, 2011, oil on linen, 36 x 50 inches

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Gleason Fine Art, Inc.

Maine Bog and Retreating Storm, 2010, oil on linen, 30 x 36 inches

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Gleason Fine Art, Inc.

MONOTYPES

Bright Bog I, 12/09, monotype on paper, 32 x 48 inches

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JOELLYN DUESBERRY

Gleason Fine Art, Inc.

Hovering Storm, Maine, II, 1/11, monotype on paper, 18 x 26 inches

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Gleason Fine Art, Inc.

Maine Bog in Late Summer I, 12/09, monotype on paper, 32 x 48 inches

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Gleason Fine Art, Inc.

Fallen Spruce and Seaweed, Maine Beach II, 2008, monotype on paper, 20 x 40 inches

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Please Join Us at our Portland Gallery for:

J oe LLYn D U eS Be rrY
40 Years of Celebrating Maine
August 3 through September 29, 2012

545 Congress Street Portland, ME 04101

Opening Reception: Friday, August 3, 5 -8 p.m.

Joellyn Duesberry Artist Talk: Thursday, August 16, 5:30 - 7:30 p.m. Public Cordially Invited 545 Congress Street, Portland HOURS: Wednesday - Friday, 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Saturday, 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Email: info@gleasonfineart.com | Web: gleasonfineart.com

Highest Tide in June I, 1992, monotype on paper, 15 x 35 inches. Pages 66 and 67, A Covenant of Seasons (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1998)